


A Faulty Memory

by PaisleyWraith



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 21:22:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14144853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaisleyWraith/pseuds/PaisleyWraith
Summary: Kyle assumed his headaches were just brought on by the regular things: stress, allergies, annoying ex-friends who you unfortunately shared classes with. Only they're getting worse, and suddenly he's starting to remember things that may or may not have even happened, all concerning death.





	A Faulty Memory

**Author's Note:**

> For the anon on Tumblr that requested angst and death! My forte.

It started with the headaches. Kyle ignored those mostly, chalking them up to stress from harder classes or the uncertain future. He grumbled about it amongst his friends a couple times and that was it, he went back to flipping through a textbook and left it at that.

Less easy to ignore were the points where he began to feel... like he was missing something. Almost like when you think back to an event that was vital to you, yet you realize you only remember maybe a third of it. It itched at his mind, but Kyle couldn’t figure out what he was trying to recall.

He tried not to let the thoughts distract him too much. For now, he really needed to concentrate on the future, he had only a couple years before he was out of high school. He needed to be thinking ahead, not behind. So he mostly ignored the itching feeling at the back of his mind, and moved on.

At least it was finally the week’s end. Kyle sat at lunch with a group of kids from their class, not really caring to talk to either but Stan, Kenny, or Wendy. Kenny seemed busy listening to Butters at the moment, and Wendy was having a rather heated debate with a boy from her and Kyle’s AP World History class, and Kyle just sort of toned them all out.

His head was killing him. He felt tired. He was going to sleep in tomorrow, take some painkillers before bed and hopefully that would knock it out for good. He pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping that would stop the pounding in his head. It didn’t, and when he glanced up, Kenny was watching him.

Kyle lifted a shoulder, dismissively, and Kenny turned his attention back to his friend. No need to worry him. It was just a headache.

As if in response to this, the pain increased, forcing itself against his temples like an angry heartbeat. For some reason, the image of Kenny’s eyes on him was burned into his mind. Blue, accusing. Blank.

A sharp pain. Kyle jumped, and felt suddenly like his whole body was immersed in cool water.

Looking down at deadened, blue eyes, staring off in the last direction they’d focused on, accusing and pleading. As if asking why Kyle didn’t jump in to help him. Pale skin, purplish and blue at the lips, mouth parted eternally in the last words.

Kyle yelped, making the whole table look over. The pain was nauseating, he honestly felt like he might throw up.

“I have to go,” He said, and left everything on the table as he left the cafeteria in a rush, jostling the table with hip on the way out.

He wanted to be sick, but he couldn’t. Kyle shakily cupped his hands under the water faucet in the bathroom, splashing his face. His fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.

What was that? Kyle looked in the mirror, finding his face sickly white, making the faint freckles on his skin visible from this distance.

Almost like those intrusive thoughts, like the ones that told you to step into traffic or change the direction of your car, only with an image. Kenny, a younger, middle-school version of Kenny, lying dead and bleeding out on the sidewalk. Kyle was shivering.

“Kyle?” Stan called before he swung open the bathroom door. He stopped short when he saw Kyle leaning over the sink, shaking violently.

The boy walked over to him, immediately squeezing his shoulder. “Dude, you look awful,” He said, voice lowering in sincere seriousness. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Kyle admitted, his head still pounding. “I think…I think I need to go home.”

Stan looked all the more scared, likely because Kyle would rather die of pneumonia than go home early and miss a test in late period. He gripped Kyle’s sleeve briefly, letting go. “Are you sick? Is it diabetes? Did you eat anything at lunch?”

“It’s not that,” Kyle said, half-certain. “I’ve been working on that lately. It’s…I don’t know.” He wasn’t going to mention what he saw. That had just been…odd. “I just want to go home.”

Stan fretted, and stuck himself to Kyle’s side. Kyle relaxed a bit more. Even with their growing distance, it was nice to know Stan didn’t totally hate him or whatever was going on.

Kenny was waiting at Kyle’s locker, the third part of the regular trio, and looked unnaturally concerned. Kyle had seen concerned on his face before, of course, but that was usually reserved for his sister or something, not him.

“What’s up, Bro-lov?” Kenny was teasing, but his brows were still furrowed.

“I feel like shit,” Kyle said, turning the dial on his lock. Looking at Kenny made him more nauseous for some reason. “That’s what up.”

“You look like shit, too,” Kenny jabbed, at the same moment Kyle’s shaking hands dropped his lock. Kenny quickly stooped to pick it up, offering it back. “Doesn’t he look like shit, Stan?”

Stan looked at Kenny weirdly, but Kyle didn’t even bat an eyelash as he shut his locker and swung his backpack over his shoulder. Kenny dropped all pretenses at that point.

“Do you want me to walk you home?” He asked, seriously, and Kyle couldn’t look him in the eyes. The pounding was starting again.

“No, Ken, thanks,” Kyle struggled to remain civil. He was seriously going to vomit. “I have to go, guys. I’ll text you later.”

“Feel better, dude,” Stan’s concern followed him, wrapping around his shoulders like a blanket.

Kyle walked home, without even stopping by the office. He wasn’t going to go through that. He was a model student otherwise so they could all suck it. He was going home.

Kyle wrapped his arms around himself. He felt so cold. Did he have the flu? That would explain it. He’d go home, maybe talk his folks into going to the doctor. Anything to get rid of this. His heart was even racing, he was afraid.

Why was he afraid?

Kyle flinched as the pain jabbed at his mind, and stumbled, having to stop.

Red. Blood was so, so red, and there was so much of it. The jagged protrusion of bone, skull, jutting right above his right eyebrow. Skin peeled back and stretched unnaturally, holes in a face he knew as well as his own, a gaping mouth.

Kyle threw up.

The images didn’t stop.

The smell of burning flesh, acrid and heavy, able to taste the smell of human flesh on your tongue, breathing it. The mist of blood…a roadway. Sickening thuds. A blue and white bus. Whole meteors, rocks, weight. The sound of something wet being crushed, crunching and soft squishes and then watching the red run into the asphalt.

Kyle was gasping. Passerbys were starting to ask if he was alright, people he knew and recognized. Kyle ended up running home.

Why was he seeing this. Was he going crazy? He ran upstairs with a hasty excuse, his mother’s loud lecture ceasing almost immediately as her eldest son heaved in the bathroom.

Oh god, what was happening?

Why was he seeing Kenny die? Over and over and over and over, a hundred different scenarios. Ages. Times. Places.

His mother fussed over him, efficiently letting him off the hook for abandoning school. Kyle shucked off his shoes and crawled into bed, not bothering to change. He shivered, pulling the blankets over his head. His heart was racing and his head wouldn’t stop pounding. It hurt. It hurt so much.

Lightning. Knives. Why were adults attacking him? Standing there every time, feeling annoyance or surprise or anger that would soon fade into indifference.

_REMEMBER_

Kyle jumped, hearing the sound. Oh god, he was going crazy. Kyle was gasping for air, nearly hyperventilating.

He could hear sounds now. Cries, screams, pleading. His name, his own name on Kenny’s lips, begging him for help.

This was so vivid. Kyle couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t move. Why was this…this wasn’t…

Suddenly as if he were transported back, into a time where they were both just dumb kids, Kyle could see Kenny in his stupid hero costume. With a gun, a real gun to his head. Asking him to remember.

And then pulling the trigger.

Kyle wanted to scream.

Kenny, an older Kenny, one in maybe 6th grade? Grabbing Kyle by the shirt and kissing him before stepping out into the street. After being confronted, Kyle could…remember that…

None of this was random. Kyle gasped for air. None of it was just random imagery. He could see, he could _feel,_ …

A moment by his bedside in the hospital, holding his hand in his own until the end. Stan wasn’t there.

All of these were something he could remember. His head hurt so much. Everything was starting to connect, hundreds upon hundreds of vague memories suddenly becoming sharp, a thousand little moments unrelated that became connected again. As if he’d just forgotten.

Try to remember this time.

He wanted to forget, he wanted to forget, he wanted to. Oh god, what was happening to him? The gun glinting against his head, blue eyes way too old to belong to someone as young as them. The hopelessness, anger. Accusation. It was _his fault_ , it was Kyle’s fault. He set him off. He upset him. Kenny killed himself.

Watching Kenny break down under stress, some kind of fight. Telling Cartman congratulations, he was off to shoot himself when he got home. Cartman jeering after a while, but suddenly hesitating as Kenny didn’t turn around. Calling after him, hesitant with the insults this time.

Kyle doing nothing. Watching.

Absences. Long, long, long absences. Not seeing Kenny again for days, and not bothering to care. Filling his absence with another body or ignoring it altogether.

Staring into Kenny’s cracked, dry skull, able to see the back of his bones, cavernous and eternal.

Death.

So much death.

Last week, watching Kenny’s face tiredly resigned as intestines spilled out over the kitchen floor while Kyle visited at work. As if his entire torso vomited, letting go of everything that kept him alive. Blood and thick congealed fluids seeping through his shirt as he slowly slumped, sliding down against the machine.

Looking Kyle in the eyes. Blue, so many shades of blue. So old and tired, hopeless and empty.

Staring up at him, knowing he wouldn’t step forward. Wouldn’t care. Wouldn’t remember afterwards. Dying looking at him, Kyle the last image his mind would hold onto.

A dead, empty stare. The rattling sounds of last breaths. Just the resignation and tiredness on his face. All of it.

And he did nothing.

Never.

He never did anything.

Kyle didn’t realize he was crying at first, but tears were dripping off his face. The pain was less now, the sharpness replaced by an aching dullness as everything slowly connected- like waking up after a fever dream.

Kyle took a ragged breath.

“What’s happening?” He asked himself, voice uncertain and smaller than it had been in years.

These were…memories? He almost wouldn’t think so, but…every image was connected to something he knew absolutely to be truth. Events he recalled immediately to mind, just now longer. Like the fucking extended edition of recollection, he could remember everything about those events: long ago and recent.

Kenny had killed himself in front of him dozens of times. Maybe a fourth of those were accompanied by him looking Kyle in the eyes and asking him to remember. Or, in recent years, saying things he-

Kisses. Not just once, not just in middle school. Kyle felt sick. Three kisses altogether. Two times he said something to Kyle that made him ill to think about saying before killing himself.

And then, once…

 _I know it’s not your fault, Ky_ Kenny had whispered, eyes full of tears. Not sad but rage, angry and in so much pain. _But I can’t deal with this right now._

A shot. Watching him fall.

Another time, Kyle and he being kids. Kenny pushing himself between danger, some cracked-out adult and Kyle, despite the fact Kenny had been tiny back then. Protecting him.

Dying for him.

Not once. Not even dozens of times.

Kyle took a breath, longer and slow.

It was like looking out into an abyss, and suddenly seeing a light. One, singular light. And then another lit. And then another, another, until you looked over a vast sea of pinpricks where so recently had been nothing.

Kenny, sacrificing himself over and over and over again. Often not thinking twice, not even looking at Kyle at all. Screams of pain, soft whimpers, soft begs for comfort. All unheeded.

Kenny.

Kyle covered his lips. He felt like his skin was too tight, his skull too small for his brain. But the nausea had passed, the pain was dull and behind his eyes.

Almost in a daze, he sat up, pushing back his covers. He stared at his headboard, blankly.

Memories. So many of them. A million lights in the darkness, Kyle staring out over waves upon waves of things he had forgotten.

Kyle’s gaze turned slowly to the clock, feeling like everything was in slow motion. Sluggish, thick. School wasn’t out yet.

He buried his face in his arms.

Kenny.

What was this? Why had he forgotten? What were these memories?

The image of Kenny begging him for help was burned into his mind, forever. Bleeding, crushed, gurgling blood. Reaching.

Kyle stared blankly at the wall, filtering through his new memories.

\--

Kenny was off work at seven. Kyle was in sweatpants and a tshirt, curled in a corner and texting Stan to reassure him he was fine. He’d eaten something, he felt way better physically, but that meant nothing as far as his mental state went.

The more time passed, the less it hurt, and the more real it all felt. Kyle sat by the living room window with a cup of tea, a blanket around his shoulders. He leaned against the chair, curled up and thinking.

It hurt emotionally. Like a physical pain in his chest. So many things he’d forgotten, now back in sharp clairvoyance. He could see what clothes Kenny had been wearing. Who was with them. Watching Stan react much the same way as him, Cartman lose interest quicker. Anyone who cared would forget, slowly, and things would go back to normal.

Kyle was waiting.

The only person who could confirm any of this was Kenny. Though the thought of seeing again brought some…pretty awful things to mind, Kyle had to be sure he wasn’t going crazy. And if he was, he would gladly ship himself to some kind of asylum if it meant getting rid of these memories.

If it wasn’t, however…

Kyle saw Kenny and threw off the blanket. He set the mug on the table, it may have sloshed over but he didn’t check, and slipped outside before his parents could stop him.

Kenny stopped immediately when he saw Kyle leave the house, waiting for him. Kyle jogged over.

“Hey, you look…how are you feeling?” Kenny switched once he realized maybe he shouldn’t mention how awful Kyle looked at the moment.

He’d intended to walk up to him and demand answers immediately.

Kenny’s eyes held it all. Each memory, so many of them he looked at his friends for. Kyle, his name on his lips and eyes lingering on him.

Kisses and confessions soaked in blood, tarnishing them forever.

He didn’t need the reassurance. It was real. Solidified in those eyes, a million different scenarios in his life that were meant to be forgotten, remembered.

Kyle didn’t slow down. He more or less crashed into Kenny, grabbing him and pulling him close. Feeling him breathe, gasp in surprise, warmth and life radiating off his skin.

Kyle soaked in it. Every beautiful draw of breath, his heart reassuringly beating under his shirt. Alive, breathing, beautiful.

“Kyle?” Kenny sounded alarmed now, arms wrapping tight around him. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

If Kyle had been in Kenny’s shoes, he would have grown resentful. The worry in Kenny’s voice seeped into Kyle’s skin, soothing the wounds left there by what he now realized was his own faulty memory.

His fault.

“I’m so sorry,” Kyle said, pressing his face into his shoulder. “Kenny.”

“No, no, no, what are you talking about?” He sounded outright scared now, pushing Kyle away to look at him with truly frightened eyes. Blue, full of life. “Look at me. What’s wrong?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kyle said, feeling dazed as he stared back at him. “That I never remembered you dying?”

Kenny let go of Kyle as if he were molten metal. He backed off a whole step, looking between his eyes. Unsure.

Gouged out eyes, exposed veins pouring onto the floor in spurts. Kyle tried to fight off the images, shivering.

“You’ve killed yourself in front of me,” Kyle said, voice hushing. Kenny was staring, unmoving. “You’ve saved my life. You’ve died in about a thousand different, impossible scenarios.” Kenny was immobile, seemingly even holding his breath. Kyle pushed. “Haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Kenny replied, voice just as quiet. Arms wrapped around himself.

He wasn’t crazy. He’d been correct. A network of new memories, all screaming to be noticed.

“Why didn’t I remember?” Kyle asked, himself, Kenny, the universe, he wasn’t sure. “Why… what…”

It was almost beyond comprehension.

“I don’t know…why…” Kenny was saying, slowly. Carefully. “You don’t…do you remember?”

“Yes,” Kyle rubbed his forehead. “It all just came rushing back. Just…I forgot years worth of things. It’s all here, now. It hurts.”

“Oh god,” Kenny whispered. “That’s why you went home.”

“This all actually happened?” Kyle said, feeling somewhat hysterical. “How do you- you’re alive!”

“I come back,” Kenny said weakly, and took the step forward to be next to him again. “I’ve always come back. You remember all of it?”

“You killed yourself in front of me from ages nine to sixteen, Kenneth, I remember,” Kyle’s voice was sharper than he intended, but the boy didn’t seem to even notice.

“Oh my god.” Kenny’s hands covered his lips. “You remember.”

Kyle’s fingers twitched, and the blond’s eyes flit down. He opened his arms, and Kyle pressed himself back against the boy. He was shaking again.

This was reality. Burnt flesh and exposed innards and dried skulls. All the boy in his arms, who begged him for help, just to remember, and never got it.

“How do you not hate me?” Kyle croaked. He might not fully understand it yet, but that thought rang prominent throughout.

“I don’t hate you,” Kenny said, grip so tight it hurt. Kyle welcomed it, unable to take a full breath he was crushed so tightly in his arms. He needed it. “I don’t hate you, Ky. You’re my friend. We’re cool. Everything is good. Please don’t cry, man, I don’t know what to do.”

Oh shit, he was. Lethargic tears dripped down his face, soaking into Kenny’s shoulder.

He didn’t understand any of this. The visions wouldn’t stop, screams and crying ringing in his ears.

“Come inside with me?” Kyle all but begged. “Please.” They could talk about it. Figure it out, maybe. At the very least, Kyle could not handle not seeing Kenny. He needed to know he wasn’t in those images he saw every time he closed his eyes. That he was alive, breathing.

“Yeah, of course,” Kenny said, a hand combing through Kyle’s unruly hair. “I’m right here. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay. Kyle had the urge to shove him, angrily. Instead he curled his fingers further into his shirt. It wasn't okay. None of this was okay.

But he remembered.


End file.
